Electric Vehicles – Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

“No army can stop an idea whose time has come,” Victor Marie Hugo, famous French poet, novelist, and dramatist, had once said, and these words hold true for electric vehicles also. This statement is very important in this context because numerous attempts have been made to delay the adoption of electric vehicles in the past, but in the present time, electric vehicles are making big waves in the automobile industry. These noise-free, pollution-free, and high-performance vehicles are expected to make internal combustion engines obsolete by 2025. Most of the world’s nations are adopting stricter norms to ban petrol and diesel cars in the near future, meaning, electric vehicles are going to be a common sight on our roads soon. A ban on petrol and diesel cars is likely to be adopted in Britain in 2030; Norway and various European countries are aiming for 2025, while India, Israel, France, and the Netherlands are aiming for 2030, with Germany, Taiwan, the United States, and China aiming for 2040 or earlier. We will see as we progress through this chapter how electric vehicles have achieved superior performance, by analyzing the technology behind the induction motor, inverter, Li-ion battery power source, and above all, synchronized vehicle mechanism, in a step-by-step manner. The major secret behind the electric vehicle is its power house, that is, the induction motor, which is an invention made by two great scientists, Galileo Ferraris in 1885 and Nicola Tesla in 1887, independently, with Nicola Tesla applying for US patent in November 1887 and getting the patent in May 1888. We will study the induction motor along with the technology behind the Li-ion batteries and also learn about alternatives to Li-ion battery, including hydrogen cell and solar-powered vehicles. The concept of electric vehicle is not something new or path-breaking, because, we will be surprised and astonished to know, electric vehicles have existed much before IC engines were even developed. In that era, cities like New York had charging stations on the streets where electric vehicles could be charged. However, the battery technology wasn’t anything great to speak of, as lead-acid batteries of that era had poor backup and needed a very long charging duration. This was the major reason that electric vehicles of that era lost the race to high-performance IC engines. As the Industrial Revolution kicked in and the number of vehicles increased, the need for fossil fuels also increased, along with their price. So IC engines were mated with different kinds of technologies, like in hybrid vehicles. Broadly speaking, vehicles are classified as: Conventional vehicles, which are pure IC engine vehicles running on fossil fuel, like petrol and diesel. Hybrid vehicles, which are an evolution of conventional vehicles and use two types of fuel, namely, a combination of petrol and gas. Hybrid electric vehicles, which are a further evolution of hybrid vehicles and use fossil fuel as the primary fuel for its IC engine along with an electric motor which runs on battery source as secondary engine. Electric vehicles, which use a pure induction motor along with a battery source which can be recharged. The battery technology used is broadly called Li-ion technology, but alternate technologies such as solar cells and hydrogen cells are also under development. In this chapter we will go into the details of electric vehicles, starting from their design, design consideration parameters, up to their implementation. We will discuss about the evolution of Li-ion battery technologies, their life cycle, their methods of efficient charging, and their reuse. We will also discuss in detail the alternatives to the Lithium-ion battery and other advances made in battery technology that could change our future.